Here's a simple snippet that does XHR request, WITHOUT cookies (due to flag Ci.nsIRequest.LOAD_ANONYMOUS can remove to send with cookies) (MDN :: Info on flags]. Copy this first code block in, then see usage examples below.
var {Cu: utils, Cc: classes, Ci: instances} = Components;
Cu.import('resource://gre/modules/Services.jsm');
function xhrGetPost(url, post_data, cb) {
let xhr = Cc["@mozilla.org/xmlextras/xmlhttprequest;1"].createInstance(Ci.nsIXMLHttpRequest);
let handler = ev => {
evf(m => xhr.removeEventListener(m, handler, !1));
switch (ev.type) {
case 'load':
if (xhr.status == 200) {
cb(xhr.response);
break;
}
default:
Services.prompt.alert(null, 'XHR Error', 'Error Fetching Package: ' + xhr.statusText + ' [' + ev.type + ':' + xhr.status + ']');
break;
}
};
let evf = f => ['load', 'error', 'abort'].forEach(f);
evf(m => xhr.addEventListener(m, handler, false));
xhr.mozBackgroundRequest = true;
if (post_data == undefined) {
post_data = null;
}
if (post_data) {
xhr.open('POST', url, true);
} else {
xhr.open('GET', url, true);
}
xhr.channel.loadFlags |= Ci.nsIRequest.LOAD_ANONYMOUS | Ci.nsIRequest.LOAD_BYPASS_CACHE | Ci.nsIRequest.INHIBIT_PERSISTENT_CACHING;
//xhr.responseType = "arraybuffer"; //dont set it, so it returns string, you dont want arraybuffer. you only want this if your url is to a zip file or some file you want to download and make a nsIArrayBufferInputStream out of it or something
xhr.send(post_data);
}
Example usage of for POST:
var href = 'http://www.bing.com/'
xhrGetPost(href, 'post_data1=blah&post_data2=blah_blah', data => {
Services.prompt.alert(null, 'XHR Success', data);
});
Example usage of for GET:
var href = 'http://www.bing.com/'
xhrGetPost(href, null, data => {
Services.prompt.alert(null, 'XHR Success', data);
});